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E Unibus Pluram
Cultural criticism; on television, fiction (and fiction-writing), postmodernity and irony.
44 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1993
30 people are currently reading
483 people want to read
About the author
David Foster Wallace
131 books13.4k followersDavid Foster Wallace was an acclaimed American writer known for his fiction, nonfiction, and critical essays that explored the complexities of consciousness, irony, and the human condition. Widely regarded as one of the most innovative literary voices of his generation, Wallace is perhaps best known for his 1996 novel Infinite Jest, which was listed by Time magazine as one of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005. His unfinished final novel, The Pale King, was published posthumously in 2011 and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Born in Ithaca, New York, Wallace was raised in Illinois, where he excelled as both a student and a junior tennis player—a sport he later wrote about with sharp insight and humor. He earned degrees in English and philosophy from Amherst College, then completed an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. His early academic work in logic and philosophy informed much of his writing, particularly in his blending of analytical depth with emotional complexity.
Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System (1987), established his reputation as a fresh literary talent. Over the next two decades, he published widely in prestigious journals and magazines, producing short stories, essays, and book reviews that earned him critical acclaim. His work was characterized by linguistic virtuosity, inventive structure, and a deep concern for moral and existential questions. In addition to fiction, he tackled topics ranging from tennis and state fairs to cruise ships, politics, and the ethics of food consumption.
Beyond his literary achievements, Wallace had a significant academic career, teaching literature and writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. He was known for his intense engagement with students and commitment to teaching.
Wallace struggled with depression and addiction for much of his adult life, and he was hospitalized multiple times. He died by suicide in 2008 at the age of 46. In the years since his death, his influence has continued to grow, inspiring scholars, conferences, and a dedicated readership. However, his legacy is complicated by posthumous revelations of abusive behavior, particularly during his relationship with writer Mary Karr, which has led to ongoing debate within literary and academic communities.
His distinctive voice—by turns cerebral, comic, and compassionate—remains a defining force in contemporary literature. Wallace once described fiction as a way of making readers feel "less alone inside," and it is that emotional resonance, alongside his formal daring, that continues to define his place in American letters.
Born in Ithaca, New York, Wallace was raised in Illinois, where he excelled as both a student and a junior tennis player—a sport he later wrote about with sharp insight and humor. He earned degrees in English and philosophy from Amherst College, then completed an MFA in creative writing at the University of Arizona. His early academic work in logic and philosophy informed much of his writing, particularly in his blending of analytical depth with emotional complexity.
Wallace’s first novel, The Broom of the System (1987), established his reputation as a fresh literary talent. Over the next two decades, he published widely in prestigious journals and magazines, producing short stories, essays, and book reviews that earned him critical acclaim. His work was characterized by linguistic virtuosity, inventive structure, and a deep concern for moral and existential questions. In addition to fiction, he tackled topics ranging from tennis and state fairs to cruise ships, politics, and the ethics of food consumption.
Beyond his literary achievements, Wallace had a significant academic career, teaching literature and writing at Emerson College, Illinois State University, and Pomona College. He was known for his intense engagement with students and commitment to teaching.
Wallace struggled with depression and addiction for much of his adult life, and he was hospitalized multiple times. He died by suicide in 2008 at the age of 46. In the years since his death, his influence has continued to grow, inspiring scholars, conferences, and a dedicated readership. However, his legacy is complicated by posthumous revelations of abusive behavior, particularly during his relationship with writer Mary Karr, which has led to ongoing debate within literary and academic communities.
His distinctive voice—by turns cerebral, comic, and compassionate—remains a defining force in contemporary literature. Wallace once described fiction as a way of making readers feel "less alone inside," and it is that emotional resonance, alongside his formal daring, that continues to define his place in American letters.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 71 reviews
June 26, 2023
This essay is a staple for people interested in narration, particularly the relationship between television and literature, and the New Sincerity movement. First published in "The Review of Contemporary Fiction" in 1993 and then again in the now classic collection A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments (as well as in The David Foster Wallace Reader and Der Spaß an der Sache), DFW details why irony can detract from empathy (the main objective in all of his writing) and what literature can achieve that TV can't. Plus, he ventures into the business of telling the future, and sees more personalized, thus: atomized, forms of digital media consumption arise, which, you know, totally happened.
I'm currently reading all of DFW's essays for the second or third time, and it's still a delight.
I'm currently reading all of DFW's essays for the second or third time, and it's still a delight.
July 29, 2020
This man was an absolute prophet. Every point of his, from irony and faux-rebellion ultimately reinforcing mass-consumption, to improved technology exacerbating the problem, have been proven entirely correct by modern times. Just look at the modern state of media, where banal properties like the Marvel Cinematic Universe and Ready Player One rake in countless millions in profit by coating their blatant consumerism in a threadbare veneer of "parody" and "self-awareness". In short, if you want to understand why a sizable portion of this generation are immature manchildren, I recommend you read this essay.
April 2, 2020
"Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly."
"For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant quality of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical with but rooted in the phenomenon of watching."
"Americans seemed no longer united so much by common beliefs as by common images: what binds us became what we stand witness to."
“Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.”
"For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant quality of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical with but rooted in the phenomenon of watching."
"Americans seemed no longer united so much by common beliefs as by common images: what binds us became what we stand witness to."
“Irony has only emergency use. Carried over time, it is the voice of the trapped who have come to enjoy their cage.”
March 30, 2021
Intriguing enough to keep me high key engaged for 43 pages, oddly savage in places (like the 3 pages where he writes a dissertation on why My Cousin My Gastroenterologist was mid)
March 20, 2023
"The next real literary "rebels" in this country might well emerge as some weird bunch of anti-rebels, born oglers who dare somehow to back away from ironic watching, who have the childish gall actually to endorse and instantiate single-entendre principles. Who treat of plain old untrendy human troubles and emotions in U.S. life with reverence and conviction. Who eschew self-consciousness and hip fatigue. These anti-rebels would be outdated, of course, before they even started. Dead on the page. Too sincere. Clearly repressed. Backward, quaint, naive, anachronistic. Maybe that'll be the point. Maybe that's why they'll be the next real rebels. Real rebels, as far as I can see, risk disapproval."
This quote, which I had found a long time ago, piqued my interest in reading David Foster Wallace. It's been years since I first found this quote, yet the world has evolved: the political spheres have shifted, new technologies are announcing themselves from behind the horizon, not to mention the pandemic we've experienced globally - which sets E Unibus Pluram in a new light.
45's career as GOP, the subsequent storming of the Capitol as if it were just a meme; Brexit; the early dawn of Web 3.0 and its technological applications already being promoted as the next distraction; these are just some of the things I was reminded of whilst reading a text that treats the affect of television on U.S. culture and somehow foreshadow(s)(ed) what was/is coming next and how that will affect its allies.
I implore you to read and annotate the essay for yourself, for these are the things that affect the course in which your local culture will run for the years to come. It is, indeed, a prophetic text, in the sense that everything audiovisual has become self-referential, absorbing of irony and critique. The question is if we want to break this cycle and if so, how to proceed. The quote I provided above doesn't really provide us with answers in the sense that it doesn't really tell you what the next rebel is like, yet that is exactly what appealed to me initially. It is a question that invites the reader to look into their own creativity. In what way are you an author? What questions would you like to discuss within a community of thinkers?
What follows next is a personal interpretation of these questions: In many ways I was reminded of the writer Michel Houellebecq, who is eschewed in France by the cultural and intellectual Parisiens, yet praised by common readers and the ones who present awards, which only goes to show that being a writer can still be provocative, dangerous even, when certain ideas have gained a dogmatic status. It is exactly the role of the writer to lure these ideas out of their aura, it is not to be complacent and all warm and fuzzy and explicitly boring. Houellebecq is quite boring. He doesn't make the typical loop-de-loops French writers love to make. Rarely does anything exciting happen in his characters' lives. His language is plain, yet the questions presented in his novels don't have black nor white answers as the media often portrays them to be, and when Houellebecq concludes the story with a solution, that solution is always formed as something outside of the main character's control, thereby adding the question of one's agency over historical outcomes. In other words, can individuals contribute to historical shifts, or are they decided singlehandedly by the force of a collective majority? His novels invite the reader to reflect without confusion or irony. They speak to the reader directly.
I believe this is the point Wallace drives toward within the quote: to avoid sensationalist storytelling like movies and television do, to avoid the linguistic obstacles that have made poststructuralism an elitist philosophy, something so many "popular" thinkers (Chomsky, Peterson) use as an argument to throw the entire school into the bin and replace it with their own outdated ideologies, not to mention the postmodern idiots that spread around their confusion willingly like a disease (Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman). Wallace seems to be so significant exactly because he read postmodern thinkers and knew how to translate them for an American audience that is parented how to speak by screens. He knows how most people like their stories: focused, easy to read, with room for the reader to imagine the details and relate to the characters involved. If this is the sacrifice we have to make to keep literature alive, so be it.
This quote, which I had found a long time ago, piqued my interest in reading David Foster Wallace. It's been years since I first found this quote, yet the world has evolved: the political spheres have shifted, new technologies are announcing themselves from behind the horizon, not to mention the pandemic we've experienced globally - which sets E Unibus Pluram in a new light.
45's career as GOP, the subsequent storming of the Capitol as if it were just a meme; Brexit; the early dawn of Web 3.0 and its technological applications already being promoted as the next distraction; these are just some of the things I was reminded of whilst reading a text that treats the affect of television on U.S. culture and somehow foreshadow(s)(ed) what was/is coming next and how that will affect its allies.
I implore you to read and annotate the essay for yourself, for these are the things that affect the course in which your local culture will run for the years to come. It is, indeed, a prophetic text, in the sense that everything audiovisual has become self-referential, absorbing of irony and critique. The question is if we want to break this cycle and if so, how to proceed. The quote I provided above doesn't really provide us with answers in the sense that it doesn't really tell you what the next rebel is like, yet that is exactly what appealed to me initially. It is a question that invites the reader to look into their own creativity. In what way are you an author? What questions would you like to discuss within a community of thinkers?
What follows next is a personal interpretation of these questions: In many ways I was reminded of the writer Michel Houellebecq, who is eschewed in France by the cultural and intellectual Parisiens, yet praised by common readers and the ones who present awards, which only goes to show that being a writer can still be provocative, dangerous even, when certain ideas have gained a dogmatic status. It is exactly the role of the writer to lure these ideas out of their aura, it is not to be complacent and all warm and fuzzy and explicitly boring. Houellebecq is quite boring. He doesn't make the typical loop-de-loops French writers love to make. Rarely does anything exciting happen in his characters' lives. His language is plain, yet the questions presented in his novels don't have black nor white answers as the media often portrays them to be, and when Houellebecq concludes the story with a solution, that solution is always formed as something outside of the main character's control, thereby adding the question of one's agency over historical outcomes. In other words, can individuals contribute to historical shifts, or are they decided singlehandedly by the force of a collective majority? His novels invite the reader to reflect without confusion or irony. They speak to the reader directly.
I believe this is the point Wallace drives toward within the quote: to avoid sensationalist storytelling like movies and television do, to avoid the linguistic obstacles that have made poststructuralism an elitist philosophy, something so many "popular" thinkers (Chomsky, Peterson) use as an argument to throw the entire school into the bin and replace it with their own outdated ideologies, not to mention the postmodern idiots that spread around their confusion willingly like a disease (Joe Rogan, Lex Fridman). Wallace seems to be so significant exactly because he read postmodern thinkers and knew how to translate them for an American audience that is parented how to speak by screens. He knows how most people like their stories: focused, easy to read, with room for the reader to imagine the details and relate to the characters involved. If this is the sacrifice we have to make to keep literature alive, so be it.
July 16, 2020
In this essay, Wallace makes many thought provoking observations, meditations and insights about our relationship to TV, TV's relationship to literature, and how all of these things contribute to the popular opinions and behaviors of U.S. citizens.
The essay was extremely insightful in pointing out consequences incidental to having a tightly interwoven market and culture by using a comprehensive analysis comparing TV and fiction books over the roughly 30-year period predating it. Wallace describes how the economy of network TV demands content-creators to make shows with one singular goal in mind: "ensure as much watching as possible;" he argues that the hyper-solicitous and obliging method of doing so makes TV a "low art" form, in that it is too eager to please. Wallace makes the argument that because Americans watch an average of 6-hours per day of TV (more like 4 hours these days without compounding phone/computer entertainment), this "low art" turns out to be highly influential (socially, culturally, psychologically etc.) but not necessarily in ways that are beneficial to its consumers.
.
.
.
I find that a lot of Wallace's conclusions check out with the experiences I have had while coming of age in America over the past twenty-odd years. TV was an enormous part of the popular culture and the social hierarchy in my experiences growing up, as was the belief that cynicism and naivety were mutually exclusive, as was ridicule "as both the mode of social intercourse and the ultimate art form," as was the ubiquitous glorification of immodest success, excess, and self-gratification. These forces contribute to the "vacuum of values" felt in the culture today, possibly explaining the mass feeling of alienation and purposelessness (Weltschmerz, maybe) in my generation; and who knows maybe it's all interlinked with the explosion of anxiety and depression diagnoses, mass drug consumption and addiction, and the pitiful lack of political activity/interest seen in young Americans today as well.
Because of this, I thought to myself that this essay would definitely serve as a useful prerequisite for anyone contemplating reading Infinite Jest; in my estimation a modest amount of the ideas, influences, and sentiment in E Unibus Pluram were fuel for Wallace's magnum opus. It also gives you a taste of the author's infamous verbosity in a context where it isn't too strenuous of work to uncover its precision and its integrity to his writing, in my opinion. Overall I really enjoyed it. Would recommend.
The essay was extremely insightful in pointing out consequences incidental to having a tightly interwoven market and culture by using a comprehensive analysis comparing TV and fiction books over the roughly 30-year period predating it. Wallace describes how the economy of network TV demands content-creators to make shows with one singular goal in mind: "ensure as much watching as possible;" he argues that the hyper-solicitous and obliging method of doing so makes TV a "low art" form, in that it is too eager to please. Wallace makes the argument that because Americans watch an average of 6-hours per day of TV (more like 4 hours these days without compounding phone/computer entertainment), this "low art" turns out to be highly influential (socially, culturally, psychologically etc.) but not necessarily in ways that are beneficial to its consumers.
.
.
.
I find that a lot of Wallace's conclusions check out with the experiences I have had while coming of age in America over the past twenty-odd years. TV was an enormous part of the popular culture and the social hierarchy in my experiences growing up, as was the belief that cynicism and naivety were mutually exclusive, as was ridicule "as both the mode of social intercourse and the ultimate art form," as was the ubiquitous glorification of immodest success, excess, and self-gratification. These forces contribute to the "vacuum of values" felt in the culture today, possibly explaining the mass feeling of alienation and purposelessness (Weltschmerz, maybe) in my generation; and who knows maybe it's all interlinked with the explosion of anxiety and depression diagnoses, mass drug consumption and addiction, and the pitiful lack of political activity/interest seen in young Americans today as well.
Because of this, I thought to myself that this essay would definitely serve as a useful prerequisite for anyone contemplating reading Infinite Jest; in my estimation a modest amount of the ideas, influences, and sentiment in E Unibus Pluram were fuel for Wallace's magnum opus. It also gives you a taste of the author's infamous verbosity in a context where it isn't too strenuous of work to uncover its precision and its integrity to his writing, in my opinion. Overall I really enjoyed it. Would recommend.
December 2, 2022
Què bé em cau aquest senyor, diu exactament el que penso.
November 16, 2022
A great quote from near the end about the overall point: “Irony, the too-successful rebel: the ability to interdict the question without attending to its content is tyranny”.
A lot of stuff about irony as a tool of corporate power, very cool
A lot of stuff about irony as a tool of corporate power, very cool
September 24, 2024
My text to Jemma summarizing this:
Written in the late 80s about tv culture— it’s a critique of irony and meta irony. Basically he argues that pervasive irony, meta irony and ironic cynicism on TV and in culture as a result promote a distancing of people from the world. His big idea here is that in a culture that demands you to be kind of faux-rebellious and not take anything seriously, and veneer everything you do with multiple layers of self-aware irony, the most rebellious thing you can do is be earnest. So basically irony bad sincerity good. It’s really awesome
Written in the late 80s about tv culture— it’s a critique of irony and meta irony. Basically he argues that pervasive irony, meta irony and ironic cynicism on TV and in culture as a result promote a distancing of people from the world. His big idea here is that in a culture that demands you to be kind of faux-rebellious and not take anything seriously, and veneer everything you do with multiple layers of self-aware irony, the most rebellious thing you can do is be earnest. So basically irony bad sincerity good. It’s really awesome
September 20, 2025
David Foster Wallace, after reading Infinite Jest, became one of my favorite writers of all time. I did not have to read another piece of fiction from him to determine that he had one of the best prose styles ever as well as some of the most conscious literary and social criticism available on the market. I bought The Broom of The System on eBay a while back which came with two other books: a first edition of Infinite Jest and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again. In the latter, a collection of essays and arguments, there exists an essay, roughly 60 pages in length, titled E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction.
This essay is superb, prophetic, and mindblowing. A DFW critic may have things to say about Wallace’s fiction, maybe it’s annoying, pretentious (whatever that means now), or bloated (all of these are untrue, by the way), but anyone who reads these essays and specifically E Unibus Pluram will know that on September 12, 2008, we lost one of the greatest contemporary thinkers and writers to ever put pencil to paper.
Regarding television and its connection to U.S. literature, specifically documenting their connection from the 60s counterculture movement’s rebellion all the way to the 90s shows which Wallace defines postmodern literature from that era as hyperrealism, this essay contains an astonishing amount of consciousness that I don’t think I have ever seen from any other postmodern writer like DFW.
Wallace admits that television has become a virtually essential part of American culture and that the worship of irony in post-modernism is really just an endless cycle of “what I’m saying is not what I’m actually saying,” not anything substantial; or, what Wallace called it, “unmeaty.” The love for irony and its beating into the ground has become its own science for Wallace and he almost solves irony’s problem in this very essay as well as why irony seems to be the last step in the eternal recurrence of the “American youth rebellion” America has been experienced for nearly 80 years now.
Irony’s constant insistence upon its existence has watered itself down and Wallace knows this. Wallace knows that irony is what makes a watcher of television feel good, intelligent, smart and funny. Irony tells you that you understand the stupidity of the thing you’re making fun of so you’re not like the other stupid people who think that thing you’re making fun of is NOT stupid, and the cycle repeats itself until that irony starts to go into the fiction and BOOM! Now you have ironic authors that are constantly profiting off of making the reader feel above the others in the system of literary and media consciousness and forcing them to continue watching or reading my constantly reinforcing how smart and funny both the author and the audience are for understanding the “truth” of stupid things. Whew, that was a doozy.
Wallace’s critique of America and television does not come down to anti-TV at all; he even states multiple times that E Unibus Pluram is not a call to action about throwing away all televisions but to simply accept the fact that television has become an essential part of our lives and is and always will be part of the youth rebellion that every single generation has seen since its invention. What to do is not to insist upon irony or to let irony take complete control of the literary, but to integrate it consciously whilst containing creative substance and genuine humanity, or, less wordily, don’t rely on irony. Wallace’s essay on television and U.S fiction is by far one of the best essays I have ever laid my eyes on and it’s not a surprise that he also wrote one of my favorite books of all time…
This essay is superb, prophetic, and mindblowing. A DFW critic may have things to say about Wallace’s fiction, maybe it’s annoying, pretentious (whatever that means now), or bloated (all of these are untrue, by the way), but anyone who reads these essays and specifically E Unibus Pluram will know that on September 12, 2008, we lost one of the greatest contemporary thinkers and writers to ever put pencil to paper.
Regarding television and its connection to U.S. literature, specifically documenting their connection from the 60s counterculture movement’s rebellion all the way to the 90s shows which Wallace defines postmodern literature from that era as hyperrealism, this essay contains an astonishing amount of consciousness that I don’t think I have ever seen from any other postmodern writer like DFW.
Wallace admits that television has become a virtually essential part of American culture and that the worship of irony in post-modernism is really just an endless cycle of “what I’m saying is not what I’m actually saying,” not anything substantial; or, what Wallace called it, “unmeaty.” The love for irony and its beating into the ground has become its own science for Wallace and he almost solves irony’s problem in this very essay as well as why irony seems to be the last step in the eternal recurrence of the “American youth rebellion” America has been experienced for nearly 80 years now.
Irony’s constant insistence upon its existence has watered itself down and Wallace knows this. Wallace knows that irony is what makes a watcher of television feel good, intelligent, smart and funny. Irony tells you that you understand the stupidity of the thing you’re making fun of so you’re not like the other stupid people who think that thing you’re making fun of is NOT stupid, and the cycle repeats itself until that irony starts to go into the fiction and BOOM! Now you have ironic authors that are constantly profiting off of making the reader feel above the others in the system of literary and media consciousness and forcing them to continue watching or reading my constantly reinforcing how smart and funny both the author and the audience are for understanding the “truth” of stupid things. Whew, that was a doozy.
Wallace’s critique of America and television does not come down to anti-TV at all; he even states multiple times that E Unibus Pluram is not a call to action about throwing away all televisions but to simply accept the fact that television has become an essential part of our lives and is and always will be part of the youth rebellion that every single generation has seen since its invention. What to do is not to insist upon irony or to let irony take complete control of the literary, but to integrate it consciously whilst containing creative substance and genuine humanity, or, less wordily, don’t rely on irony. Wallace’s essay on television and U.S fiction is by far one of the best essays I have ever laid my eyes on and it’s not a surprise that he also wrote one of my favorite books of all time…
January 3, 2025
Somehow the social ills from TV culture (stemming from the horrific 6 hours spent watching it per day in 1990) that DFW describes in this essay seem quaint and twee in the face of ticktock now. It's insane he died before social media popped off because every part of this essay---be it the sense of ironic detachment/wink-winkiness of literature and television or the American addiction to "special treats"---could fit perfectly in 2025 with the words swapped out. I am going to throw my phone into the ocean ❤️
Quotes I liked:
"Americans choose to view concepts like authority, sincerity, and passion in terms of our willingness to be pleased. Not only are sincerity and passion now "out," TV-wise, but the very idea of pleasure has been undercut." (Crazy specifically after Ethel Cain's viral little treatise on irony poisoning)
"Indifference is actually just the contemporary version of frugality for US young people: wooed several gorgeous hours a day for nothing but our attention, we regard that attention as our chief commodity, our social capital, and we are loath to fritter it."
"Television's biggest minute-by-minute appeal is that it engages without demanding. One can rest while undergoing stimulation. receive without giving. In this respect, television resembles other things that mothers call "special treats"--e.g., candy, or liquor--treats that are basically fine and fun in small amounts but bad for us in large amounts and really bad for us if consumed as any kind of nutritive staple. One can only guess what volume of gin or poundage of Toblerone six hours of special treat a day would convert to."
Quotes I liked:
"Americans choose to view concepts like authority, sincerity, and passion in terms of our willingness to be pleased. Not only are sincerity and passion now "out," TV-wise, but the very idea of pleasure has been undercut." (Crazy specifically after Ethel Cain's viral little treatise on irony poisoning)
"Indifference is actually just the contemporary version of frugality for US young people: wooed several gorgeous hours a day for nothing but our attention, we regard that attention as our chief commodity, our social capital, and we are loath to fritter it."
"Television's biggest minute-by-minute appeal is that it engages without demanding. One can rest while undergoing stimulation. receive without giving. In this respect, television resembles other things that mothers call "special treats"--e.g., candy, or liquor--treats that are basically fine and fun in small amounts but bad for us in large amounts and really bad for us if consumed as any kind of nutritive staple. One can only guess what volume of gin or poundage of Toblerone six hours of special treat a day would convert to."
May 26, 2023
Cultural criticism around anything postmodern, for me at least, feels dichotomously incoherent and yet intuitive. Like half the time I read something in this essay and had an audible “Hell yeah” and then when I went to try and explain it in my own words, I ended up sounding like someone who is two dollars short of a buck fifty.
What I’m trying to say is that David Foster Wallace is really good at putting words to feelings, better than I can.
What I’m trying to say is that David Foster Wallace is really good at putting words to feelings, better than I can.
April 10, 2023
I've written about this piece at my Substack: https://stetson.substack.com/p/trappe...
April 21, 2023
Had to read this for a college class. Found it a little overwhelming at first (was a lot of information for me to take in all at once), but interesting once I finally understood the points being made. Made good arguments about the use of irony in television
September 30, 2025
“Los próximos «rebeldes» literarios verdaderos de este país podrían muy bien surgir como una extraña banda de antirrebeldes, mirones natos que, de alguna forma, se atrevan a retirarse de la mirada irónica, que realmente tengan el descaro infantil de promover y ejecutar principios carentes de dobles sentidos. Que traten de los viejos problemas y emociones pasados de moda de la vida americana con reverencia y convicción. Que se abstengan de la autoconsciencia y el tedio sofisticado. Por supuesto, estos antirrebeldes quedarían pasados de moda antes de empezar. Muertos en la página. Demasiado sinceros. Claramente reprimidos. Anticuados, retrógrados, ingenuos, anacrónicos. Quizá se trate de eso. Quizás esa es la razón de que vayan a ser los próximos rebeldes verdaderos. Los rebeldes verdaderos, por lo que yo sé, se arriesgan a ser desapro-bados. Los viejos rebeldes posmodernos se expusieron a los chillidos de asco: al horror, al disgusto, al escándalo, la censura, las acusaciones de socialismo, anarquismo y nihilismo. Los riesgos actuales son distintos. Los nuevos rebeldes pueden ser artistas que se expongan al bostezo, a los ojos en blanco, a la sonrisita de suficiencia, al golpecito en las costillas, a la parodia de los ironistas y al «Oh, qué banal». A las acusaciones de sentimentalismo y melodrama. De exceso de credulidad. De blandura. De dejarse embaucar de buena gana por un mundo de mirones y seres acechantes que temen al miedo y al ridículo más que al encarcelamiento sumario. Quién sabe. Los narradores actuales más cotizados parecen una especie de final del final de la línea.”
January 30, 2025
[...]irony, entertaining as it is, serves only a negative function. [...] (Irony is) singularly unuseful when it comes to constructing anything to replace the hypocrisies it debunks. [...] It is unmeaty. Even gifted ironists work best in sound bites.
Dangerously relevant today as it ever was. DFW outlines the culture of media consumption at almost every angle—humanely, concernedly—and comes to the radical conclusion that sincerity is the new punk. Rather than rolling his eyes at all of the eye-rolling, stepping deeper into meta-irony, he passionately and earnestly discusses the value of being passionate and earnest.
This might be one of the few things I consider "mandatory reading." Gorgeous, clarifying essay. Not enlightening, necessarily, since a lot of the ideas and talking points in this have been repeated, built upon, and nodded towards since 1993, but definitely clarifying and beautifully put.
January 10, 2025
Naturally, I am not familiar with eighties and nineties television, so I didn't get his direct references and critique of certain programs, though the gist of it persists in modern television even today.
His critique of irony was one that really resonated with me, especially because I use irony a lot - I now see that irony isn't really an intellectual's tool and should not be used as much. I also really enjoyed his description of a writer - an ogler, voyeur, that's born with the need of observing human nature.
I am still on the fence about Wallace's prowess as a writer - he and Bret Easton Ellis, a favorite writer of mine, had some back and forth, not really agreeing on some stuff. I read somewhere that Ellis took offense at Wallace's lack of recognition of Ellis's body of work. I should read up more on that.
His critique of irony was one that really resonated with me, especially because I use irony a lot - I now see that irony isn't really an intellectual's tool and should not be used as much. I also really enjoyed his description of a writer - an ogler, voyeur, that's born with the need of observing human nature.
I am still on the fence about Wallace's prowess as a writer - he and Bret Easton Ellis, a favorite writer of mine, had some back and forth, not really agreeing on some stuff. I read somewhere that Ellis took offense at Wallace's lack of recognition of Ellis's body of work. I should read up more on that.
November 14, 2025
“ABSÓRBEME, DEMUESTRA QUE ERES LO BASTANTE CONSUMIDOR.”
Pffff qué decir? Extremadamente pesimista y deprimente pero buenísimo. Te abre los ojos cuando pensabas que ya los tenías abiertos. Foster Wallace.
“Los viejos rebeldes posmodernos se expusieron a los chillidos de asco: al horror, al disgusto, al escándalo, la censura, las acusaciones de socialismo, anarquismo y nihilismo. Los riesgos actuales son distintos. Los nuevos rebeldes pueden ser artistas que se expongan al bostezo, a los ojos en blanco, a la sonrisita de suficiencia, al golpecito en las costillas, a la parodia de los ironistas y al «Oh, qué banal». A las acusaciones de sentimentalismo y melodrama. De exceso de credulidad. De blandura. De dejarse embaucar de buena gana por un mundo de mirones y seres acechantes que temen al miedo y al ridículo más que al encarcelamiento sumario. Quién sabe.”
Pffff qué decir? Extremadamente pesimista y deprimente pero buenísimo. Te abre los ojos cuando pensabas que ya los tenías abiertos. Foster Wallace.
“Los viejos rebeldes posmodernos se expusieron a los chillidos de asco: al horror, al disgusto, al escándalo, la censura, las acusaciones de socialismo, anarquismo y nihilismo. Los riesgos actuales son distintos. Los nuevos rebeldes pueden ser artistas que se expongan al bostezo, a los ojos en blanco, a la sonrisita de suficiencia, al golpecito en las costillas, a la parodia de los ironistas y al «Oh, qué banal». A las acusaciones de sentimentalismo y melodrama. De exceso de credulidad. De blandura. De dejarse embaucar de buena gana por un mundo de mirones y seres acechantes que temen al miedo y al ridículo más que al encarcelamiento sumario. Quién sabe.”
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November 4, 2025"Lonely people tend rather to be lonely because they decline to bear the emotional costs associated with being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly."
I do wonder what DFW would have to say about TikTok.
I do wonder what DFW would have to say about TikTok.
June 22, 2021
Su mente deductiva, logra exponer lo profundo, lo quizás inconsciente. Han pasado años y esas deducciones aplican a nuestro modelo de distribución de contenidos, a nuestro nuevo aparato exclavizante.
February 16, 2026
I don't tend to add essays that I've read onto this app, but this is one worth earmarking and will definitely revisit
February 17, 2026
I felt that he took so long to explore an idea that would have take him 10-20 pages
January 29, 2025
It's always a joy to read DFW. He was brilliant.
October 9, 2022
Beautifully mirrors so much else of what's going on in hypernormal media styles now.
"Since television must seek to compel attention by offering a dreamy promise of escape from daily life, and since stats confirm that so grossly much of ordinary U.S. life is watching TV, TV's whispered promises must somehow undercut television watching in theory ("Joe, Joe, there's a world where life is lively, where nobody spends six hours a day unwinding before a piece of furniture") while reinforcing television-watching in practice ("Joe, Joe, your best and only access to this world is TV")." (164)
"For lonely people are usually lonely not because of hideous deformity or odor or obnoxiousness-- in fact there exist today social and support groups for persons with precisely these features. Lonely people tend rather to be lonely because they decline to bear the emotional costs associated with being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly." (152)
"Since television must seek to compel attention by offering a dreamy promise of escape from daily life, and since stats confirm that so grossly much of ordinary U.S. life is watching TV, TV's whispered promises must somehow undercut television watching in theory ("Joe, Joe, there's a world where life is lively, where nobody spends six hours a day unwinding before a piece of furniture") while reinforcing television-watching in practice ("Joe, Joe, your best and only access to this world is TV")." (164)
"For lonely people are usually lonely not because of hideous deformity or odor or obnoxiousness-- in fact there exist today social and support groups for persons with precisely these features. Lonely people tend rather to be lonely because they decline to bear the emotional costs associated with being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly." (152)
October 19, 2020
David Foster Wallace made with this text the wet-dream of every philosophy student: proposing the thesis half text, killing an ideology via the same ideology, making it both accesible and complex (making it an exquisite book both for the average man and the intellectual), mention both Deleuze and Guattari only to then jump to explain a TV show, glimpse the cultural influence of a machine of not one but probably of all the generations to come (or at least those who are going to born under capitalism) and ending the text both in a challenging but intriguing note.
If contradiction was a text there is no doubt that this would be its materialization.
If contradiction was a text there is no doubt that this would be its materialization.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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June 12, 2022On irony and endless self-referentialism.
"Television used to point beyond itself. Those of us born in, say, the ´60s were trained by television to look where it pointed, usually at versions of "real life" made prettier, sweeter, livelier by succumbing to a product or temptation. Today´s mega-Audience is way better trained, and TV has discarded what´s not needed. A dog, if you point at something, will look only at your finger."
"Television used to point beyond itself. Those of us born in, say, the ´60s were trained by television to look where it pointed, usually at versions of "real life" made prettier, sweeter, livelier by succumbing to a product or temptation. Today´s mega-Audience is way better trained, and TV has discarded what´s not needed. A dog, if you point at something, will look only at your finger."
October 10, 2021
Rings more loud and true today than it did 30 years ago, and I'll probably be saying the same thing 30 years from now --- Despite the unquestioned assumption on the part of pop-culture critics that television's poor Audience, deep down, craves novelty, all available evidence suggests rather that the Audience really craves sameness but thinks, deep down, that it ought to crave novelty.
January 6, 2026
4.5/5
In his The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard wrote that "anxiety is the dizziness of freedom;" and when presented with endless varieties of options, all options, singular, become a mass, singular again, but a singular denial instead of endless acceptances: I have felt these pains before, and this David Foster Wallace essay shone more light onto the specifics of this feeling, and how, many times, I've mistaken identifying with Kierkegaard's statement. DFW discusses an aura surrounding the post-modern condition, and uses Delillo (White Noise) to explore it further--so much of our current reality has already been pre-shaped, pre-informed through constant, enveloping media, as involved as gravity, being produced, consumed, at high rates.
I just went home for the Holidays--just came back. While there--albeit with the restrictions of having the flu for multiple weeks--I watched a movie, or movie-length amounts of media, every day. Dad watched/showed YouTube Shorts at the dinner table. Sister made noticeable references to Instagram Reels to Sister, me, my parents and that composed much of the comedy we shared: laughing at the ridiculousness of events, sayings, and permeating all of this, inside my family and others I'd be stabbed through while inhibiting a, any, public space: 6-7.
Having cultural references, being a part of a culture is not new. But back to DFW and Delillo, because of the abundance of media and their extensions, their projections, it is rare, and I'm trying to think of something/sometime where I interacted with a virginal experience, to not engage with a moment, a place, an emotion without the prior influence of media, showing what "that" is and should be. Celebrity culture is porous with this: how a person should... how a relationship should ... look like/act like/sound like/smell like--and these are people, selected people, but people and not standards but the ideas from them remain: and movies, shows, podcasts, grid-posts, stories all do this, even if not maliciously, but the psychological influence remains.
And I think about my own failings--what I struggle with. And this brings me back to my venture from Kierkegaard: many of my fears are branched in unknowing, and a lack of confidence to try. A conversation between a friend, or a partner,--even just a breakfast conversation or passing comment or How are you today or I'm feeling this today--feels so terrifying not because of all the things that I could say, or do, but because I have not been told what to do. I breathe in an atmosphere of the pre-configured. If I want to learn what a relationship should be, I could watch one. If I want to experience a new place, and learn how I should feel about it, I could watch a video of it. And the images broadcasted are not guides but roads, and the human experience cannot travel only on one, it is destined to wander, to stop, to re-trace, and it is meant to be done by that person, who, scared worried afraid angry upset sad depressed, must do it for themselves, and do it because of themselves.
Mass media has eliminated the unknown--it has created instruction manuals for everything I would want to do, feel, desire, want, need. The anxiety comes from when this walkthrough is no longer there--not when anything is possible, but when the only possible options have disappeared. And then there is only me. And I worry that I've spent so much of my life consuming that of others that I've mistaken the audience for the actor.
In his The Concept of Anxiety, Kierkegaard wrote that "anxiety is the dizziness of freedom;" and when presented with endless varieties of options, all options, singular, become a mass, singular again, but a singular denial instead of endless acceptances: I have felt these pains before, and this David Foster Wallace essay shone more light onto the specifics of this feeling, and how, many times, I've mistaken identifying with Kierkegaard's statement. DFW discusses an aura surrounding the post-modern condition, and uses Delillo (White Noise) to explore it further--so much of our current reality has already been pre-shaped, pre-informed through constant, enveloping media, as involved as gravity, being produced, consumed, at high rates.
I just went home for the Holidays--just came back. While there--albeit with the restrictions of having the flu for multiple weeks--I watched a movie, or movie-length amounts of media, every day. Dad watched/showed YouTube Shorts at the dinner table. Sister made noticeable references to Instagram Reels to Sister, me, my parents and that composed much of the comedy we shared: laughing at the ridiculousness of events, sayings, and permeating all of this, inside my family and others I'd be stabbed through while inhibiting a, any, public space: 6-7.
Having cultural references, being a part of a culture is not new. But back to DFW and Delillo, because of the abundance of media and their extensions, their projections, it is rare, and I'm trying to think of something/sometime where I interacted with a virginal experience, to not engage with a moment, a place, an emotion without the prior influence of media, showing what "that" is and should be. Celebrity culture is porous with this: how a person should... how a relationship should ... look like/act like/sound like/smell like--and these are people, selected people, but people and not standards but the ideas from them remain: and movies, shows, podcasts, grid-posts, stories all do this, even if not maliciously, but the psychological influence remains.
And I think about my own failings--what I struggle with. And this brings me back to my venture from Kierkegaard: many of my fears are branched in unknowing, and a lack of confidence to try. A conversation between a friend, or a partner,--even just a breakfast conversation or passing comment or How are you today or I'm feeling this today--feels so terrifying not because of all the things that I could say, or do, but because I have not been told what to do. I breathe in an atmosphere of the pre-configured. If I want to learn what a relationship should be, I could watch one. If I want to experience a new place, and learn how I should feel about it, I could watch a video of it. And the images broadcasted are not guides but roads, and the human experience cannot travel only on one, it is destined to wander, to stop, to re-trace, and it is meant to be done by that person, who, scared worried afraid angry upset sad depressed, must do it for themselves, and do it because of themselves.
Mass media has eliminated the unknown--it has created instruction manuals for everything I would want to do, feel, desire, want, need. The anxiety comes from when this walkthrough is no longer there--not when anything is possible, but when the only possible options have disappeared. And then there is only me. And I worry that I've spent so much of my life consuming that of others that I've mistaken the audience for the actor.
July 29, 2025
DFW traces the deep and frightening relationship between the ‘low’ art of television — with its sound-and-image bisensuality, isolation, self-mocking irony, ‘weird hands’ which remain wrapped around the American audience’s throats — and postmodern fiction, which seeks to satirise American society and its televised reflection, but by the 90s had fallen into that same ironic trap. Early ironic postmodern fiction was ‘a grim diagnosis of a long-held disease’; writers like Pynchon, Delillo and Burroughs held a real mirror up to the false TV-mirror of American society. But this was no cure for the sickness. America’s obsession with irony continued on, and was co-opted by television, which DFW writes as almost (despite his insistence against is) a predatory, all-consuming force, which swallows up man’s habits, interests, trends and desires. Irony is of course among them. With this, DFW writes that: ‘the forms of our best rebellious art have become mere gestures, schticks, not only sterile but perversely enslaving.’ What a way to put it.
I wonder often what DFW would have to say about this age. He writes that television and its irony poses a great threat to American lit and culture. He frets with such intensity that it is almost prophetic. How would he diagnose us now, with our brains tethered to even tinier, portable screens? Terrible, mind-culling screens which we keep in our pockets and do more than simply entertain ourselves with. A veritable Pandora’s Box, these screens contain our lives distilled. Dark, slim, reflective things with which we can send work emails, finish college essays, longingly text old friends, bitterly stalk our exes on social media, watch porn, verbally abuse strangers with total anonymity. Irony has taken the internet generation by our ears. Think of social media sites flooded with ironic memes, proclaiming a certain passiveness to the state of the world, our acknowledged addictions to our phones, our existential fears. Think of scrolling the feed of someone you know to be miserable who looks to be having a great time. Etc.
His brief reference at the end to fiction writers turning to fundamentalism as a form of rebellion against the culture of irony was also pretty interesting. I am thinking especially of the rise in ‘trad’ culture online and those who reject modernity in various forms: churning their own butter, growing their own vegetables, making their own clothes, and of course refusing to vaccinate their children and insisting women stay in the home. In an age where the phone has superseded television, and the terrifying stream of irony and information can rest just beside our breasts or our balls, I can almost find myself sympathising with these people. In one sense they are rebelling in that way I can’t. But as DFW aptly points out, the return to this sort of trad Christian lifestyle still serve the interests of conservative corporate capitalism. (Image: Nara Smith and her ostentatious dresses and brand deal TikToks.)
Pretty amazing as DFW tends to be.
I wonder often what DFW would have to say about this age. He writes that television and its irony poses a great threat to American lit and culture. He frets with such intensity that it is almost prophetic. How would he diagnose us now, with our brains tethered to even tinier, portable screens? Terrible, mind-culling screens which we keep in our pockets and do more than simply entertain ourselves with. A veritable Pandora’s Box, these screens contain our lives distilled. Dark, slim, reflective things with which we can send work emails, finish college essays, longingly text old friends, bitterly stalk our exes on social media, watch porn, verbally abuse strangers with total anonymity. Irony has taken the internet generation by our ears. Think of social media sites flooded with ironic memes, proclaiming a certain passiveness to the state of the world, our acknowledged addictions to our phones, our existential fears. Think of scrolling the feed of someone you know to be miserable who looks to be having a great time. Etc.
His brief reference at the end to fiction writers turning to fundamentalism as a form of rebellion against the culture of irony was also pretty interesting. I am thinking especially of the rise in ‘trad’ culture online and those who reject modernity in various forms: churning their own butter, growing their own vegetables, making their own clothes, and of course refusing to vaccinate their children and insisting women stay in the home. In an age where the phone has superseded television, and the terrifying stream of irony and information can rest just beside our breasts or our balls, I can almost find myself sympathising with these people. In one sense they are rebelling in that way I can’t. But as DFW aptly points out, the return to this sort of trad Christian lifestyle still serve the interests of conservative corporate capitalism. (Image: Nara Smith and her ostentatious dresses and brand deal TikToks.)
Pretty amazing as DFW tends to be.
May 31, 2023
Freakishly prescient. I enjoyed his musings on the absurdism of self-consciousness and watchability, and the manipulation of irreverence and irony masquerading as ersatz sincerity to reinforce the cycle of “indulgence, guilt and reassurance” in the culture of watching.
This man just put into words why social media sometimes strikes me as mildly disturbing. Despite the normalisation of telecomputers in the form of mobile devices and the individual’s increased liberty to “store, enhance, edit, recombine, and present…images to himself, in the privacy of his very own home and skull”, it can hardly be said that TV’s “ironic, totalitarian grip on the American psychic cajones” has truly been broken.
At any rate, it has birthed an eerily similar – if not more pernicious – system of imagery as a natural substitute/accompaniment to govern the psychology of the masses. Social media is rife with the same flavour of faux lack of self-consciousness to evoke watchability and syncretism in ideas and beliefs to celebrate diversity. I don’t claim to be above anything, but it definitely feels strange when I’m in the middle of something as seemingly mindless and unselfconscious as participating on the platform and make the silly mistake of thinking and stumbling upon the peculiar realisation that perhaps I’m skillfully – though not entirely consciously – feigning unselfconsciousness after all in this bizarre, paradoxical realm of watching and being watched. Hypocrisy is the price of admission.
“For 360 minutes per diem, we receive unconscious reinforcement of the deep thesis that the most significant feature of truly alive persons is watchableness, and that genuine human worth is not just identical with but rooted in the phenomenon of watching. And that the single biggest part of real watchableness is seeming to be unaware that there’s any watching going on. Acting natural. The persons we young fiction writers and assorted shut-ins most study, feel for, feel through are, by virtue of a genius for feigned unself-consciousness, fit to stand gazes, and we, trying desperately to be nonchalant, perspire creepily, on the subway.”
This man just put into words why social media sometimes strikes me as mildly disturbing. Despite the normalisation of telecomputers in the form of mobile devices and the individual’s increased liberty to “store, enhance, edit, recombine, and present…images to himself, in the privacy of his very own home and skull”, it can hardly be said that TV’s “ironic, totalitarian grip on the American psychic cajones” has truly been broken.
At any rate, it has birthed an eerily similar – if not more pernicious – system of imagery as a natural substitute/accompaniment to govern the psychology of the masses. Social media is rife with the same flavour of faux lack of self-consciousness to evoke watchability and syncretism in ideas and beliefs to celebrate diversity. I don’t claim to be above anything, but it definitely feels strange when I’m in the middle of something as seemingly mindless and unselfconscious as participating on the platform and make the silly mistake of thinking and stumbling upon the peculiar realisation that perhaps I’m skillfully – though not entirely consciously – feigning unselfconsciousness after all in this bizarre, paradoxical realm of watching and being watched. Hypocrisy is the price of admission.
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